Chinese and South Korean media have denounced the Japanese prime minister, Shinzo Abe, for failing to issue a new apology for Japan’s wartime conduct or mention its use of wartime sex slaves in his historic speech to the US Congress on Wednesday.

Abe, the first Japanese leader to address a joint session of Congress, offered his “eternal condolences” for Americans who died during the war, and acknowledged that Japan had “caused suffering” in Asia.

But in a speech that was generally well received by his American hosts, he again stopped short of issuing an explicit apology for Japan’s wartime actions which drew criticism in China and South Korea.

China’s state news agency, Xinhua, reported that Abe had told his US audience only that he would “uphold” war statements made by his predecessors on the 50th and 60th anniversaries of the end of the Pacific conflict.

Those statements included a “heartfelt apology” and an acknowledgment thatJapan had waged a “war of aggression” on the Asian mainland.

In a commentary published on the day of Abe’s historic address, Xinhua also criticised new defence guidelines announced this week that will see Japan play a bigger role in its security ties with the US.

The agency said: “Team America: world police now has a more loyal Japanese samurai to join the cast and meddle in global affairs.”

Abe’s highly anticipated speech sparked similarly critical coverage in South Korea, whose calls for him to apologise for Japan’s wartime use of tens of thousands of “comfort women”, most of them from the Korean peninsula, went unheeded.

In an opinion piece for the South Korean news agency Yonhap, Chang Jae-soon said all hopes of an apology evaporated on Wednesday.

Abe, Chang said, “was so dexterous in sidestepping questions with vague words and expressions carefully selected to stick to his administration’s position not to unequivocally acknowledge Japan’s responsibility for the atrocity”.

The reaction in the US, where Abe is midway through a weeklong state visit, was more positive.

He prompted applause and brought US politicians to their feet when he said: “My dear friends, on behalf of Japan and the Japanese people, I offer with profound respect my eternal condolences to the souls of all American people that were lost during World War II.”

Shortly before arriving on Capitol Hill, Abe laid a wreath at a second world war monument.

“The battles engraved at the memorial crossed my mind, and I reflected upon the lost dreams and lost futures of those young Americans,” he said.

“History is harsh. What is done cannot be undone. With deep repentance in my heart, I stood there in silent prayers for some time.”

In the strongest indication yet of what Abe intends to say in a statement to mark the 70th anniversary of the war in August, he spoke of “deep remorse” over the war and acknowledged that “our actions brought suffering to peoples in Asian countries. We must not avert out eyes from that.”

China and South Korea, as well as some Congress members, had urged him to be more explicit and repeat the words of an apology issued by Tomiichi Murayama in 1995 and again a decade later by Junichiro Koizumi.

Although Abe sidestepped the sensitive subject of comfort women, he noted that armed conflicts “have always made women suffer the most”.

He told the audience, which included Lee Yong-soo, an 86-year-old former sex slave from South Korea: “In our age, we must realise the kind of world where finally women are free from human rights abuse.”

Several Democrats were dismayed that Abe had not used the opportunity to apologise for wartime sexual slavery.

“It is shocking and shameful that [Abe] continues to evade his government’s responsibility for the systematic atrocity that was perpetrated by the Japanese imperial army against the so-called ‘comfort women’ during World War II,” Democrat representative Mike Honda, a Japanese-American, said after the speech.

Democrat congresswoman Judy Chu said she was “incredibly disappointed” that Abe did not directly address the issue of comfort women: “Without responsibility and remorse, it is impossible to move forward.”

Understandably, given his audience, Abe devoted time to the power of reconciliation that has characterised Japan’s relations with the US during the past 70 years.

At one point he pointed out Lawrence Snowden, a veteran of the battle of Iwo Jima , and Yoshitaka Shindo, whose grandfather commanded the Japanese troops on the island. The two men stood and shook hands.

Senior US politicians complimented Abe’s speech.

“I thought he made it very clear that there was responsibility on Japan’s part,” the vice president, Joe Biden, said, adding that Abe’s gesture to the US war dead was “much appreciated”.

The Republican senator John McCain described Abe’s war comments as “historic recognition of two peoples reconciled with their shared history”.

Abe did not refer directly to Japan’s dispute with China over ownership ofSenkaku islands – known in China as Diaoyu – a source of tension between the two north-east Asian rivals that is causing anxiety in Washington.

He did, however, touch on China’s increasingly assertive military posture in the Asia-Pacific.

“We must make the vast seas stretching from the Pacific to the Indian oceans seas of peace and freedom, where all follow the rule of law,” he said.